


The End of Us

by goldensnitch18



Series: Oblivious Daydreaming [2]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Cheating, F/M, Unhappy Ending
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-03
Updated: 2018-05-03
Packaged: 2019-05-01 12:46:53
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,522
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14520900
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/goldensnitch18/pseuds/goldensnitch18
Summary: Hermione reminisces on the end of her relationship with Draco as she prepares for her wedding.





	The End of Us

The End of Us

The home where they met sat easily sketched into the side of the hills so far from civilization that they rarely saw other people, let alone feared being caught. The home was a lonely and ancient cottage which Draco had found for the sole purpose of hiding their meetings from the watchful eyes of those who knew them. He had purchased it from the oldest son of the man who had lived in the cottage for sixty three years before the elderly man was forced to move into London so that his son could keep a closer eye on him. Each morning he awoke inside the larger of the two rooms in the cottage to feel her heart beating against his chest, he was reminded of the look of longing that had consumed the old man as he had taken in the site of his cottage for the last time. Even at that time, Draco had sensed the man's emotions ran much deeper than for the bleached stone of the home, the wild flowers engulfing the terrain, and the lake which rested a ten minute walk from the cottage. Time had proved him right.

When they were here, the pair of them were able to drop their frustrations, their worries, their loyalties, and devote themselves completely to each other. When they were here, the cottage wrapped them in a cocoon and made it seem like maybe, just maybe, what they were, what they did, what they lived was quite all right, quite acceptable, and not at all the horrible web of deception, lies, and treachery they knew it to be when they were living their real lives, the lives they lived when they were in Ministry Employees. The life in which she was part of The Department for the Regulation and Control of Magical Creatures, where she astounded him by making progress with her efforts to better the lives of house-elves and other creatures she felt were misunderstood and underrepresented, and he worked in the International Magical Office of Law in the Department of International Magical Cooperation and hoped one day to join the Wizengamot and become Head of the Department. It was a difficult task to be sure after the embarrassment that the end of the war had cast upon his family, but he was quickly proving himself to be a sturdy asset and a good worker.

This morning however was unlike any other he had spent at the cottage with her. He felt the difference the moment he awoke. She had already left their bed, but this was nothing new. She often woke before him and lost herself in the scenery, a book, or making breakfast. But this morning when she was not there, he felt a shot of cold run through him and goose bumps form on his arms and legs. It took him a moment to orient his senses, and then he realized why her absence was bothering him. 

Hermione had been distant the night before during dinner. Her smiles had been a little too broad, her laugh a little too loud, and her kiss a little too cold. He'd asked her about her strange behavior, but she had pushed away his insecurities by simply ignoring them and pulled him out of the house to walk down to the lake with her. Shortly after arriving home, she had shed him of his clothes as she pulled him towards their bedroom. It had been amazing, but something had been different. The passion and love was still there, but she had seemed desperate to cling on to him, to hold him, to feel him move inside her. And, then she had cried, silent tears that slid down her cheeks and onto the sheets and his chest as he clutched her too him, terrified of the cause. 

Now, he did not know what to expect when he left this bed. Would he find the reason for her distance or her tears? Did he really want to know?

Knowing that it was futile to attempt to put off the inevitable, Draco slid from the bed slowly and pulled his jeans on from the night before. His button down shirt was missing, but he didn't have to think very hard about where it could be. She loved to wear his shirts in the morning, and he didn’t mind at all. In fact, it made him feel like they were normal lovers for a single moment when he saw her in one. He moved to the attached bathroom then and took in the sight of their toiletries mixed on the counter and their towels hanging side by side on the rack right outside of the shower. Her brush was still in the sink, and he moved it away to brush his teeth as he stared into the mirror, still wondering what it was that she saw in him, what it was that kept her coming here to their cottage, and what she had been thinking about the night before as he held her and felt her tears falling onto his skin, burning him.

Sure enough, when he found her on the back porch, staring off in the direction of the lake, spinning something small around one of her fingers, she was wearing his blue shirt, buttoned loosely in two places and hiding just enough to make his fingers itch to take it off, but he knew that this was not the time. When she sensed him coming, Hermione turned to him and wrapped her hand around the object she had been spinning before holding it out to him without speaking. Before his eyes fell on it, he knew from the feel of the cold metal what it was. Nevertheless, he forced his eyes down and made them take in the gold circle crowned with three diamonds, the largest of which rested in the middle of the two smaller.

He had once strolled into a jewelry shop under the guise of browsing for his mother and thought about buying such a ring for her, and it had looked just like this one, it could have been the very ring he had imagined placing on her finger so many times for all he knew, but this ring was not from him. There was only one man who could have given this to her, a certain red head she happened to date in their real lives. The man they had both known was suppose to become her husband and be the father of her children, but that had been before this, before them. Somewhere in the deep recess of his mind, he had imagined that one day he could give her this ring, and they could stroll proudly down Diagon Alley together as she wore it, but now that day would never come, not that he had ever really expected it to.

"When did he give this to you?" Draco asked as he set the ring on the edge of her chair. Her eyes bore into his.

"Two nights ago. I said yes, naturally," she added, knowing that he would have asked her if she hadn't freely released the information. "You know what this means?" she asked him placing the ring in the pen pocket of the shirt she was wearing.

"No. What?" he asked, though he had a good idea what was coming.

She looked away again, out towards the lake again. "We have to stop this," she told him, though her voice barely carried to him.

"Right. I suppose it's okay to cheat on your boyfriend for four years, but once you get the ring it's wrong." He could hear the bitterness in his own voice, but he couldn't bring himself to care either that he was revealing so much of himself or that his words would hurt her.

Hermione didn’t seem able to respond to that right away. She pushed herself up from the chair slowly and came to stand in front of him. She took in the sight of his tousled hair, bare chest, and his jeans. "I love you," she said, and it sounded not like an admission but more a realization. "I love you so much." She traced the outline of his face with her hand and pressed her lips to his shoulder.

"Marry me, then," he whispered, unable to resist. Who cared what people thought? Who cared if they had anyone else? He just needed her to be his, only his. "I love you. I have loved you for so long. Maybe we haven't been best friends for eleven years, but I know the sides of you that you hide from even him. I was the person you came to,” he reminded her, “Me. Not him."

"That isn't fair." Her voice still seemed to fly away with the breeze as she spoke the words. "He had lost his brother," she told him weakly. 

"But you were still here, you still needed someone." He brought her chin up with his hand and pressed his lips the sides of her mouth. 

"I can't marry you," she said simply as their lips hovered a breath apart. "It's not the way things are supposed to end. You and I are not meant to be together. We are meant to part. We are meant to be with other people." He knew that this the unwritten rule of the arrangement, the think they avoided at all costs, but tonight he wasn’t playing by the rules. 

"Who gets to decide things like that?" he demanded.

She sighed softly against his mouth. "It's just the way it is. Ron and I ... we're ..." She faded out, apparently unable to articulate what she and Weasel were. 

"So, basically what you are telling me is that you won't marry me because it wouldn't be what is expected of you." He drew out of their embrace and watched her in a new light. She was beautiful to him if not to most. Her hair was often out of control, but her brown eyes shone with such a passion that he could hardly resist drowning in them every time they flashed his way. Her lips were as vital to him as his own need for oxygen, and her body was never more beautiful than when it was draped with one of his shirts, showing just enough skin to remind him of what she was hiding, but, even so, he was starting to see what she was thinking, what she was trying to tell him. "You're giving up on actually having passionate love, because it isn't what everyone else wants, and here I thought I was suppose to be the closed minded pureblood." Draco didn't wait for a response. He simply left her on the porch and walked back in the cottage, through the kitchen to the hall and then their bedroom. He found a clean shirt in the closet and pulled it on as he heard her enter the room.

"I'll head back now. I'd appreciate it if you were gone by the morning. I'll have to sell this place if we won't need it anymore." He tried to ignore the fact that his chest was seizing, his heart beating loudly in his ears. 

"Draco..." He winced at the lost tone of her voice, but he couldn't bear to let her pull him deeper into her. He was already losing his mind and if he had to listen to her talk about marrying Ron Weasley again, he would surely do something rash and horrific to her fiance that would end with him in front of the Wizengamot instead of seated amongst its members.

"You've said enough, Hermione." He told her as his fingers reached his wand. He spun on the spot, leaving nothing but a crack behind to jolt her into realizing what she had just done.

XXX

Hermione hadn't seen Draco for six months. The worst six months of her life by her calculations, but she knew that this was the way it was suppose to be. She had been tempted that first week to go to him and admit that she was being a fool, he was right, of course, she loved only him and would only love him for the rest of her days. They would have married, and she would have started a new life with him, but in the end their love would have prevailed and nothing would have mattered. 

Hermione choked on a sob that had tried to turn into laughter. She brought a perfectly manicured hand to her neck as she attempted to cough up the lump of fear that had positioned itself in her throat the moment she had opened her eyes that morning.

She had been tempted that first week, but never again, because she knew all too well that she did not love him and only him. She loved Ron, as well. Granted she loved them both in completely different ways with completely different parts of her heart, but she loved them both. If it had been only her love that mattered, then maybe the man waiting for her at the end of the aisle would not have red haired combed neatly, but instead soft gold wisps that fell into his eyes. The problem was that she very well knew it was not only her feelings that mattered. 

Hermione knew that if she gave up Ron, she would be giving up her dearest friends and her soon too be family as well. She had already lost her parents to irreversible memory charms and Australia. She could never lose these people. She would surely break, which was why she was standing in front of the mirror, staring into it as if attempting to see past the cream colored gown, the jewels, and the hair so soft it could hardly be hers, into her very soul. She was waiting, as she often did these days, waiting for the ballad that would announce her walk to him, to her fiance, soon to be husband.

Hermione had hoped, desperately, fervently, that her thoughts would be sorted. She had hoped that this day, the day of her wedding, would find her void of all care for the man she had left six months previous when she had accepted that ring, but it was not to be. She closed her eyes and felt his hands on her neck, her shoulders, and finally resting on her waist as his lips pressed into the skin beneath her ear, whispering into her very heart as it beat so wildly she feared it might burst. She forced herself to look into the mirror to prove he wasn't there behind her.

She knew where he was. She knew exactly where he was at this very moment, because Ginny had come swearing into the room declaring her displeasure at his presence. Ginny had no idea what had transgressed between the bride and Draco Malfoy in the four years before she had accepted Ron's proposal. Hermione had tried to ask inconspicuously who he had brought with him, but feared that her future sister-in-law had heard the tremor carried under her voice. It had been with a bash over the head that she received the news, he was with Astoria Greengrass, the woman his parents had been after him to marry for nearly two years. She was apparently sporting an addition to her own left hand rather proudly. At this news, she had informed Ginny she needed these last few minutes to herself to collect her thoughts, and her friend had left with a suspicious glance and a click of the door sealing behind her.

She had added him to the list of invitees at Harry's request with deep reluctance. What if he made a scene? What if she did? What if he couldn't keep his eyes away from her? What if she couldn't? What if he looked a little too longingly at her? What if she cast the same look at him? Could she trust herself to see him after six months on the day of her wedding of all days? Was she ready to really put him behind her?

Her thoughts moved to the cottage they had half lived in together and the visit she had paid to it the week before. Her fingers had trailed over every surface of the house she could reach, longing to freeze the feeling of them into her mind. She had been expecting the home to be empty, void of any signs of life, but was startled to see obvious indications that he still visited. There was a supply of food in the cupboards and fresh juice in the fridge. She had expected a coat of dust, but the counters and tables were clean and some even adorned with the wildflowers she had loved to pick to decorate the table for their breakfast. There was a blanket lazily lying on the couch and an empty wine glass on the end table next to an empty bottle. The bed was made, but a shirt was laid out on the pillow that had been hers.

It was his shirt. She knew this instantly. Even after all these months she knew it was the shirt she had left there on the bed waiting for him to return. She moved to touch it and then brought it to her face, inhaling the scent. She was surprised to find her perfume still lingering with his cologne. She set it back on the bed as tears, those that had threatened her from the moment her eyes met the sight of the cottage, began to fall down her cheeks silently. 

She entered their bathroom and opened the cupboards there as well. Her things still mixed with his, but they had not been touched, whereas his had moved and some replaced. 

She found her way to the porch, nearly blind from the tears, and sank into the chair she had been sitting in that morning she had told him of her engagement. She wiped her eyes and took in the sights around her, absorbing them all for the last time, and then she had suddenly felt gripped by the desire to let him know that she had been there. He must know that she still thought about him. After their time apart, their passion seemed just as real as it had for four beautiful, tragic years, so she made her way into the kitchen once more and found a piece of parchment and a quill. There were a few empty ink bottles and one nearly empty one that she used to scrawl a note to him. She put it on the table next to the wildflowers and thought for a fleeting moment about staying until he arrived, but she had too much work to do for the wedding and could hardly trust herself to leave if she saw him again in this home that had born witness to their love so many times.

As she looked at herself now in the mirror in the church she would be married in, she couldn't help but let herself wonder whether she was making the wrong choice. It surprised her that she found her heart telling her she had, but she knew it was too late now. She couldn't walk away from her own wedding. Not to a man so good and loving as the one waiting for her. She turned as the door opened again to reveal Ginny, beaming, and Harry, looking a bit sick, but happy. She knew without either of them speaking that it was time, and she moved towards them, taking Harry’s arm as Ginny offered her a bouquet of lilies to rest in her other arm.

The music began, filling the church with such a powerful hum that she hardly believed the old stone wasn't crumbling around them. She listened to the sound as Harry began to talk. He talked of his disbelief and his joy, and she kissed his cheek to reassure him. He spoke one last time to tell her that he loved her, his best friend, his sister, and as the music changed, the pair of them began their walk up the aisle. 

Hermione caught sight of Draco immediately as he stood with the rest of the guests, watching her with eyes that could see into her soul the way her own could not. He never broke his gaze from her and she found herself watching him even as she listened to the vows she exchanged with Ron. 

It seemed that he had burned the words, her words, into her brain, and she could think of nothing but the scratch of her quill against the parchment as she wrote them. Now, she saw them etched into the lines on his face and hidden in his eyes. 'I could never have said enough.' She had told him, and in this moment, this moment of deepest longing for his hand on hers, she knew that she would never as long as she lived write, speak, or think a truer thought.


End file.
